Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 April 1887 — Smiles as a Means of Expression. [ARTICLE]

Smiles as a Means of Expression.

In the first place, there is the presentation smile of society. Yon are presented to a lady, who not only bows to show that she puts lierself at your feet, and perhaps gives her hand to show that she does not mean to pull hair or scratch (I still follow the doubtless correct evolution theory of ceremonials), but she “smiles and smiles” to show that her mood is one of sweet amiability, and that you are therefore, for the present, safe. Then there is the pretty, pearly, rippling laugh, with which your “nutbrown” anecdote, which has been heard already twice this evening, is received. Here, certainly, there is no pent-up cascade of emotion that seeks for an outlet. The sweet lady’s laugh is partly for your sake, that you may feel the soft thrill of self-applause; and partly for her own, because she knows she laughs well. iShe pulls it exactly as if it were a stop in an organ. Then there is the bitter laugh of the sad, sad young man, who wishes to impress upon your mind the hollowness that all things have for him ; and the well-managed smile of Jaques, the elder cynic, who thinks thus to wither your youthful aspirations, and at the same time to suggest his own unfathomed deeps of cruel disillusion. —AU lantic Monthly. A recent visitor to a Mexican silver mine relates that he was shown a mass of mercury, weighing two pounds, taken from the stomach of a horse that had worked in the pa'io. He says: “In this primitive Mexican process, which seems to be well suited to tne wants of the country, the ground ore, or silver mud, is mixed with salt, mercury, etc. The horses that tread this mud for weeks, in order to 5 ' mix the chemicals, attracted by the salt, lick up the mud, and take in the poisonous quicksilver. This, accumulating in the system, finally kills them. I was informed that the bones of these animals are ground up, in order to obtain the mercury in them.” The telegraph line built by the French in Tonquin having recently failed to work, it was found, upon investigation, that the chief of ..one of the native villages had appropriated a quantity of the wire to his own use, and replaced it with a cord of vegetable fiber. He was very much surprised when informed of the damage he had done, and had no idea but that he had made “a fair exchange, and no robbery. ” The habit of administering medicines in capsules has received a set-back in the announcement that, if there is any form of alcohol in the stomach at the time of swallowing the capsule, its gelatine is rendered insoluble. When the stomach has been rendered irritable from excesses in strong drink, medicines should not be given in capsules, as they are not likely to be dissolved. An assistant to Prof. Virchow, Dr. Grawitz, finds that about one-third of the cases pronounced in life muscular rheumatism are shown by post mortem examination to be due to trichina 1 , or pork worms. In instances observed, the parasites must have been present in the muscles for many years. Dorchester furnished a company of seventy-four men, under eommand of Capt. John Withington, for the hapless expedition against Canada in 1690. Forty-six members of this company perished at sea. “Pennv-wise, pound-foolish,” soliloquized the man in church, and, he put the in the box and the pound in his pocket. _ - * The invention of the mowing machine dates back to 1881, when the "Manning Mower” was perfected.